It is typical for pipes of various types to be positioned underneath a street. When one of these pipes requires repair, it is necessary to dig a trench in the street to access the pipe. This trench is later filled most of the way with gravel. Either a single layer or multiple layers of asphalt must then be laid on top of the gravel to repair the street.
The asphalt is first poured from a truck so that it runs lengthwise inside the trench. Then a crew of workmen equipped with rudimentary hand tools smoothes out the asphalt. The top layer is also compressed by a heavy roller, typically a power roller.
As of 2007, these workmen are typically paid an hourly wage of about $37/hr in the United States, depending on the local. Accordingly, the time consuming work of smoothing out the asphalt in the course of repairing a trench constituted a significant expense to contractors performing this kind of work, and to the local governments that pay them.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,273,375 appears to show an asphalt smoothing device that can be attached to the shovel of a back hoe. This device, however, does not appear to be capable of being lowered into a trench, because it would be blocked by a pair of outwardly extending horizontal plates. Moreover, the presence of the back hoe shovel would serve to block the view of the operator and it appears that the width of the device cannot be adjusted by the operator, unless he leaves his seat in the backhoe. Accordingly, this device does not aid in the task of smoothing asphalt that has been laid into a trench as much as would be desirable.